Bumping along the bottom

I am not an economist, which probably qualifies me very well to speculate on the outcome of the current crisis. After all, the so-called experts have generally proven themselves worthy of senior positions in the weather bureau, and not much else.

There has been much discussion of whether our current recession is "U', "V" or "J"-shaped. I am sure there are other variants (e.g. "flat-line", patient dead or the "L-shaped recession"). Well, I offer you our own BSG Asia B2B Media index which tracks the stocks of Asian listed companies in the sector we track. If this is a proxy for the economy, it looks like the bottom of a "U" to me. So, the only point on which to speculate now then is when it will come back.

We'll go with China's premier Wen Jiabao on that one and predict some time next year. This isn't just because we think he's a marvellous man (we don't) or a brilliant economist (although I suspect he employs some). It ties in directly with the views of the exhibition industry worldwide. UFI, the global association of the exhibition industry recently published the results of the first of what will be a series of global 'barometer' studies, gauging the mood of the industry. Most of the respondents don't expect any recovery this year, but more than 80% of them expect to see it by 2010 or early 2011 at the latest.

We shall see.

Where is it hurting?

Our friends at Media Partners Asia do a lot of good and solid research into what's happening in the region. They publish some of it in their Asia Media Journal which is now available online. There are always a number of things that catch the eye there, even to B2B specialists like us.

We were particularly interested to see this piece on their projections for advertising sales in 2009: the headline number is a 1.1% decrease around the region. This, they say, is "the first decline the region will have experienced since the 1998 financial crisis".

What we really found interesting, though, was the country table included in the article. I hope they don't mind me reproducing it here, because it's really worth a look:


As you can see, this shows Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan hit the hardest but many markets actually recording growth including: China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. China remains the champ in MPA's projections although 9% growth there may feel pretty sluggish to the industry after 20%+ increases in spending in 2008.

It all comes together...

Gary Trudeau may be sticking it to the twitterati in his current Doonesbury strips, but, in the interests of learning what all this fuss is about, I have signed up. All in the interests of research you understand...nothing to do with fiddling while I should be working. Nothing at all....honestl....well, you know how it is.

Anyway, having added the Twitter app to my Facebook page (the students I talked to earlier the week looked incredulous at this....they obviously thought I was far too old for this kind of stuff), the following combination of Web 2.0 giants combined forces with an Alibaba ad. So, if you didn't think this was all relevant to your B2B business before, think again. It is...

Unlike the Doonesbury hero, Roland Hedley, I promise not to discuss my underwear in my twitter posts, but do keep an eye on it. It's reaching the mainstream...

Crisis, what crisis?

United Business Media has just reported pretty decent results for 2008 with continuing revenues up 10.7% and earnings per share up 6.7%. Of course, we won't be ungenerous and mention that you get a lot more pounds for your dollars from your US and Asian businesses these days.

However....

The point we did want to make was that the Asian results in particular are very impressive. Revenues up 13% year-on-year and profits up 23.8%. That will, of course, make the hurdles the boys at CMP Asia have been set even higher to jump over this year. Good luck guys!

Nervous US meetings industry

Two separate things have caught my eye today which show just how nervous everybody is in the US meetings industry these days:

1. Firstly, I received notice from the eventpeeps.com social network (slightly embarrassing name, but quite an interesting site based on the Ning platform) that members are starting up a petition called "Keep America Meeting". They want to get 1 million signatures from people who think that the meetings industry is getting a bad press. Whether it's AIG sales people taking multi-thousand dollar spas at the taxpayers' expense or (inaccurate) reports of huge declines in visitors to shows like CES, the chattering classes are deemed to be giving business meetings and events a bad rap.
2. Now, the Mayor of Las Vegas is, according to the Economist's Gulliver travel blog, feeling aggrieved at President Obama. Oscar Goodman is reportedly upset that, when Barry told bankers "You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime", people may have missed the last four words and decided that it's generally bad to go to Las Vegas. As one of the commenters on the blog rightly said "What part of "on the taxpayers' dime" did the mayor not understand?" and the blogger himself was certainly on the money when noted "Yes, Las Vegas's convention business will suffer during the recession—but that won't be Mr Obama's fault".

And the next China is?

Well, the general consensus last year was that the "new China" (i.e. the place where you can manufacture crap for US consumers at the lowest cost) would be China....meaning inland parts of China which are still substantially cheaper than the Yangtze and Pearl River Delta areas.

Hmmm. Well Black & Decker, while perhaps not manufacturers of crap, are reknowned as being amongst the most aggressive cost cutters and I noted, then, with interest this snippet from their Q4 conference call on Seeking Alpha:

We’ve seen cost increase recently in China and therefore we continue to look at India and Vietnam and other places. As you recall when we put those plants in these low costs areas we put them in such a way where we wouldn’t have the dramatic costs of shifting our manufacturing from one facility to another or even to lower costs countries.

I'm not yet convinced that those who think the next China is China are wrong. However, those planning the location of the next series of B2B trade fairs, web sites and other media services may want to take note and start hedging their bets a bit more. Some, I know, already have been.

Watch this space.

Is 2009 the year for mobile B2B?

I have asked this before quite a few times, wondering in particular why the B2B world has been so slow to catch on to mobile. But, I'm thinking this really might be it. Three things have caught my eye (and my delicious bookmarks) in the just the past few days:

1. On 30th January, Marketing reported that "The Financial Times has added mobile as a new channel through its website aimed at reaching out to a younger demographic". That must be me then, "younger", as I immediately bookmarked the new site at m.ft.com. The killer duo of iPhone and Crackberry are obviously the key drivers here. The piece goes on to note "The site works for all phones but is optimised for the iPhone and BlackBerry which together account for over 60% of FT.com mobile traffic. A dedicated iPhone application will follow, incorporating more sophisticated graphics and charts and the ability to quickly share FT content with the integration of the address book".
2. On the same day, MinOnline featured Steve Smith's Top Five B2B Mobile Sites. He also mentions the FT site, as well as those from WWD, AgProfessional and Mining Weekly. But, he particularly highlights the Bloomberg site (although claims their iPhone app is spectacular). I looked at it and he's right. It's the clearest and quickest I've seen. Much better than either the FT or Reuters' offerings.
3. Finally, yesterday exchange4media in India reported that "If 2007 was the year of broadband penetration in India then, 2009 could well be the year of the mobile Internet. This year is set to see high usage of Internet via mobile". It quotes Star India’s Viren Popli saying, “The trend to watch out for will be far more content and services on the mobile platform. Second trend will be the launch of newer products and services on the mobile platform.”

Let's who, if anybody, in Asia picks up on this. The big players have, so far, been suprisingly quiet about all this.

Obama and the trade fair industry

He is, even in advance of Tuesday's inauguration, being credited with miraculous powers. Put a wand in his hand, some seem to feel, and Barack "Harry Potter" Obama will defeat the forces of evil and send us all off to some economic equivalent of Honeydukes Sweetshop to eat Bertie Botts' beans until we are sick.

I hadn't seen a trade fair industry twist to the new President's apparently miraculous powers until reading this piece from TradeShow Week. There is actually a serious point here: international participation in US shows did suffer badly after the security clampdowns which followed 9/11. Some actually pointed to that as one of the contributing factors to the demise of Comdex.

I was under the impression that things had improved. But, the TradeShow Week piece quotes Charles Olentine, executive vice president of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Assn., saying that "he's looking forward to how changes might impact the association's Intl. Poultry Exposition". More than 10% of that event's visitors are international and the Olentine is quoted saying that "One of the major difficulties the show faces in attracting them is visa restrictions".

Apparently, the industry is hoping that Obama's pledge to rebuild ties with the rest of the world will extend to making it easier for business visitors to get into the US (or even just into the increasingly miserable US embassies around the world). We shall see. I suspect he may have higher priorities. And, Bush's great legacy to American bureaucracy, the Dept. of Homeland Security has just made it harder for people even from the visa waiver countries to get in by implementing the new ESTA computerised pre-notification system.

It seems I was not the first to think of the Harry Potter link. In doing a quick search here, I discover that The Spoof has decided that the young magician would be the perfect nominee for Deputy Secretary of Commece. Given Bill Richardson's withdrawal from the top job, perhaps young Harry can simply step up and magic along some US exports.

Thoughts from Nanjing

Just arrived in a very frosty Nanjing for the annual CEFCO meeting of China's exhibition industry. The conference, which usually attracts around 500 people, is titled "Forging Ahead Against Crisis" and it will be interesting to take the temperature of the industry both here in China and from around the world. I hope it's warmer than the weather which has warmed up at midday to 4° from a 'challenging' -6°overnight.

The mood won't, though, be much helped by the news that, according to the BBC, "China's exports have dropped into their biggest decline in a decade". They were 2.8% year-on-year in December while imports tumbled a disastrous 21.3%. This will widen the trade gap and make it even more likely that some of the new Democrats in Washington will push for unwise trade actions against China, further deepening the spiral. Let's hope not and that steadier heads among the Obamistas prevail.

My room at the Fraser Suites looks out over the amazing building pictured here which is, I gather, the Nanjing Olympic Centre.

Swing back to mega events?

Happy New Year. What a lazy blogger I've been. Ah well. I am, however, intrigued enough by the suggestion that Apple will abandon Macworld in favour of CES to sharpen the iGooseQuill and share a few thoughts (thanks by the way to Colin Crawford for pointing to this piece via his Facebook status).

Received wisdom since the dotcom crash and the demise of Comdex has been that technology events are fragmenting and becoming more focused and specialised. Apple's shunning of Comdex, CES and other similar shows for the single brand Macworld has been offered frequently (by me amongst many others) as the best example of this key trend. We wondered when it might roll around the world and hit big events elsewhere, most notably CeBIT in Hannover.

Is this something to do with the economic downturn driving people back to big fairs or more a feature of Apple's repositioning itself as a consumer products company?